As communication networks continue to grow at a rapid pace, substantial network expansion is taking place to expand the bandwidth capacity supplied to residences and commercial enterprises. In the course of network construction or maintenance thereof it is common for inadvertent outages to occur due to an accidental break in one or more communication links.
These outages can be very costly to commercial enterprises and can be an annoyance to consumers. If outages are too frequent, businesses and consumers can choose to subscribe to services from competing service providers. Moreover, outages can be dangerous during emergency situations warranting rapid response.
A need therefore arises for a method and apparatus for configuring a network topology with alternative communication paths.